The first round of the College Football Playoff Friday and Saturday saw its four games decided by 10, 28, 14, and 25 points. That prompted a lot of discussions, especially on social media, with many arguing that certain other teams should have been chosen instead and would have produced more competitive games and some pushing back and saying that’s retroactive analysis that’s impossible to prove.
Some of the conversations were more nuanced, though. On SportsCenter with SVP Saturday night, host Scott Van Pelt and analyst Tim Hasselbeck took an interesting dive into this for almost four minutes. They covered plenty of facets of the discussion, including how fans and media often emphasize the areas where a particular team’s resume or talent looks good while ignoring the areas where it doesn’t stack up as well, and how that second-largest loss came from Tennessee (seventh in the final rankings, and not a team that saw much questioning of its inclusion).
Here’s how this conversation between Van Pelt and Tim Hasselbeck started, with discussion of “What do you think the committee should be asking itself?” pic.twitter.com/AC1HvwqQpi
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) December 22, 2024
The broadcasters here also offered a few potential things for the committee to look at going forward. Van Pelt made the case for looking at teams’ ceilings (their best wins) rather than floors (their worst losses). Hasselbeck advocated for considering teams’ strength along the line of scrimmage.
But perhaps the most notable part of this was the conclusion, where they discussed how blowouts have happened in the past in college football (in both the two-team BCS era and the four-team playoff) and the NFL, and are likely to happen in the NFL playoffs. And Van Pelt wrapped it up with a comment that there may not be any particularly easy way to guarantee competitive games.
Scott Van Pelt had some comments about a disappointing first round of the CFP.
“I just think – are these the games you want? No one can be sitting here going, ‘You want these blowout games.’ But again, SMU and Indiana had company from Tennessee in a non-competitive spot there.” pic.twitter.com/wur5XOyHv2
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) December 22, 2024
“I just don’t think there’s any clear, perfect answer. And these games, so far, were just not what we were hoping.”
This conversation stood out from a lot of the other takes on the CFP so far, many of which have seen clear claims that either a non-playoff team would have done better than a chosen one or that the committee indeed made the right choices. While Van Pelt and Hasselbeck made the case for the committee to look at particular areas going forward, they didn’t say that would provide guaranteed solutions.
That made for a discussion much more nuanced than a lot of the debate often seen on ESPN, and more interesting than many of the sure-fix takes proposed elsewhere. Maybe the answer is indeed that there isn’t a clear, perfect answer. At any rate, it made for a notable conversation, and one in sharp contrast to a lot of the other takes flying around about the CFP.
[Awful Announcing on X]